In-situ resource utilization ( ISRU ) is the practice to generate own products with local material, thinking in humans or robots working or staying on other solar-system bodies, like asteroids, the Moon or Mars.
The development of ISRU methods for the deep exploration of space and in particular for the exploration of Mars will become increasingly important in the following decades. As it is impossible to transport from Earth the required amount of some critical commodities, raw products need to be collected and transformed, in-situ, through new processes that are yet to be defined and tested.
Some of the most important products that need to be produced include oxygen, water, and methane as well as construction and radiation shielding materials. Among the new technologies that are being considered, additive manufacturing ( or 3D printing ) of lunar and Martian regolith is a possibility. The regolith is the layer of loose, heterogeneous surface deposits covering the solid rock. It includes dust, soil, broken rock and other related material present in all the planetary surfaces. Other efforts focus on extracting volatiles from the regolith, and this requires, in turn, new processing technologies and an extensive effort on mapping where the most critical resources ( water, regolith with useful volatiles, metals, salts ) may be concentrated and at reach.
